Repeating the Dose

JUST three weeks after gaining victory at Bradford City in Sky Bet League One, Argyle travel back for the second round of the Emirates FA Cup.

But with progress being made in the League and a busy Christmas period on the horizon, does Derek Adams see the competition as a distraction?

“No,” he puts bluntly,“It’s an extra game or two if we progress into the next round, and we’re going up to Bradford to try and get through to the third round draw and to try and get a big team back to Plymouth Argyle.”

Despite the previous success, Adams remains aware of the challenge that Bradford will pose.

“We went up there the last time and won 1-0. It was a very good game,” said Derek.

“Obviously they’re favourites because of where they are in the league and they’ve done well this season. But they were favourites last time we went up there. We went to them and we won 1-0 with a good performance, and we’ll have to do exactly the same again.We’ll have to take care of their danger players and they’ll have to do the same to us.

“We caused them to run out of ideas, with the way we played and shut them down. It’s never easy for a team when another team is so compact and stopped them having the space to be creative. In the end, they put a lot of balls in from diagonal crosses and we dealt well with them on the day.”

Having faced a near capacity crowd on their last visit, Argyle will be travelling north knowing that they will have a far less daunting atmosphere going against them, with the anticipated turnout for the game falling well below the previous turnout.

“I don’t think it will be the same as last time,” said Derek. “We’re probably talking about the 5-6000 mark where it was close to 20,000 last time. From my point of view, we can go there and we know we can win there, which is always a positive.”

It should be a similar team, however, with Derek not predicting too many changes to Bradford’s side.

“I don’t they will [make changes]. I think the FA Cup is important to many managers, myself included, and we want to try and progress to the next round.”